GUY PÈNE DU BOIS | SUSPENSE

Kraushaar Galleries, New York

Private collection, New York

Gift to the present owner from the above, 2016

Art News, vol. 45, no. 9, November 1946, p. 55, illustrated

Margaret Breuning, "Du Bois Softens," Art Digest, vol. 21, no. 4, November 15, 1946, p. 13, illustrated

Max Gottschalk, "New York Exhibitions: Du Bois," MKR's Art Outlook, vol. 1, no. 21, November 5, 1946, p. 4, illustrated p. 1

In a review of Guy Pène Du Bois' 1946 exhibition at Kraushaar Galleries in New York, in which the present work was shown, Margaret Breuning writes, "Du Bois's vivid pictorial imagination is so admirably supplemented by his high degree of technical skill that it is difficult to single out special items from this showing. Suspense is an admirable example of his ability to produce a dramatic moment with the utmost reticence of emotional expression. Two figures seated at a card table in the foreground become aware of a door opening at the back of the room. The sudden tenseness of their attention is inescapable. There is, moreover, a remarkable sense of spatial depth in the room that increases the effect of isolation of the two women" (as quoted in "Du Bois Softens," Art Digest, vol. 21, no. 4, November 15, 1946, p. 13).